This is a very
important release and Naxos deserve great praise for having
the commercial courage to issue what might seem to be – but
emphatically shouldn’t be – a CD with specialist appeal.

Judith Bingham’s
music has been attracting plaudits for some time now and other
pieces by her have made it onto disc already but it’s a significant – and
well deserved - accolade for her that a whole CD should now
be devoted to her music. All but one of the works included
here are choral and are challengingly but very well written
for voices and perhaps that’s not too surprising since Miss
Bingham is a singer herself and, furthermore, a singer of sufficient
ability that she was a member of the virtuoso BBC Singers between
1983 and 1986. So far as I’m aware she does not include playing
a brass instrument among her accomplishments but her writing
for brass, as demonstrated here, seems just as resourceful
and expert as is her writing for voices.

All the pieces
are important but one in particular grabbed my attention. That
is The Secret Garden for chorus and organ, which was
first performed at the 2004 Promenade Concerts in London’s
Royal Albert Hall. It’s that premičre performance that’s included
on this disc and that’s important for two reasons. Firstly,
the listener gets the unmistakable frisson of a live
event. Secondly, Judith Bingham seized the opportunity to write
for what was then the newly restored Albert Hall organ and
we hear it in all its splendour with a virtuoso organist at
the console.

It’s a fascinating
work, inspired by the composer’s speculation about what might
have happened in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were
expelled. As she writes eloquently in her note: “did God still
walk there in the evening, alone and disappointed? Did it become
an enclosed world where shame did not exist, a protected and
perfect space?” Onto that speculation Miss Bingham grafts a
fascination with plants. The text, written by her, contains
an abundance of horticultural references. It’s also framed
by two short passages from scripture: a verse from Genesis
at the start refers to the expulsion of Adam and Eve while
at the very end comes a verse from St. Matthew’s Gospel in
which Christ compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed.

The work divides
into five sections, each one entitled as if it were a movement
from a French Suite, and although these aren’t separately tracked
there are brief but discernible pauses between each one. Miss
Bingham writes: “This is meant to be a magical and intriguing
piece.” Well, for me, she’s succeeded triumphantly. The first
section, ‘Ouverture’, opens with a hugely dramatic, if brief,
depiction of Adam and Eve’s banishment. Then the second section, ‘Air
de Menuette’ [4:22] has slow-moving choral writing with a fascinating
organ accompaniment. The third movement, ‘Vol de Nuit’ [8:36]
is quite remarkable. It begins as a nocturnal scherzo with
homophonic writing for the choir accompanied by dancing organ
figurations. But the choir isn’t involved for long; their music
is but the prelude to a fabulously inventive organ solo [from
10:56]. This, the composer says, depicts “the synergy between
plants and insects”. I must admit I haven’t quite caught that – yet! – but
it’s an amazing passage of music, stunningly realized by Thomas
Trotter, who lets us hear the Albert Hall organ in all its
glory. The fourth section, ‘Entr’acte’ [12:45] is rather like
a recitative. Here the singers alternate snatches of high-lying
singing with spoken fragments against a very spare organ accompaniment.
The overall effect is arresting. Finally ‘Air de Nuit’ [15:08]
is a mysterious, sultry evocation in music of what goes on
unseen in the world of plants during the hours of darkness.
At the very end, the verse from St. Matthew is heard set to
music that’s not dissimilar to that which we heard at the very
start for the words from Genesis but this time the music has
more grandeur and less of a sense of dread.

In the above description
I haven’t begun to do justice to this superbly imaginative
and rich work. Hear it for yourself. Its appearance on disc
is a significant event.

There’s a connection
with the Promenade Concerts in the other large-scale work on
the disc, Salt in the Blood. Miss Bingham relates that
she decided to write a piece about the sea and sea shanties
during the traditional performance of Sir Henry Wood’s Fantasia
on British Sea Songs at the Last Night of the Proms in
1994. (Though she doesn’t say so, I suspect she was performing
herself on that occasion as a member of the BBC Singers.) The
resulting work, for chorus and brass, is a long way removed
from Sir Henry’s patriotic and sometimes sentimental Fantasia
but I rather think he would have approved. The text has been
assembled by Miss Bingham from a variety of sources including,
unbelievably, the Beaufort Scale. Yet it all hangs together
and illustrates evocatively five different sorts of weather
that one is likely to encounter at sea: calm, breezy, violent
storm, fog and calm. At various points in the score we hear
four different sea shanties sung by the men’s voices. I apologize
if this seems like an atrocious pun but these familiar tunes
act rather as thematic anchors and so fulfill an important
structural function. There are also three Hornpipes, which
are interludes for the brass group. These Hornpipes incorporate
some superb, punchy writing for the brass but the contribution
of the instrumentalists is no less telling when they’re accompanying
the singers. The choral writing sounds to me to be very demanding
but not in such a way as to make unreasonable, unnatural demands
on the singers as some contemporary composers do. The passage
that depicts the storm at sea is thrilling but just as ear
catching is the moment when the second Hornpipe ceases abruptly
and Miss Bingham makes extraordinary use of the unaccompanied
choir to depict the cessation of the storm [10:45]. The work
ends quietly but in such a way that the composer conveys to
her listeners that even ostensibly calm waters often have strange
and powerful currents running beneath the surface. This is
another splendidly imaginative work and it’s performed with
great panache in this studio recording

There’s also a
vivid musical imagination at work in First Light although
a share of the credit for the success of this piece must surely
go to the poet Martin Shaw, who provided a challenging and
powerful set of images in the poem about the Incarnation of
Christ that he wrote at Miss Bingham’s invitation. Shaw sees
the Incarnation as a potent, cataclysmic event and any traditional
Christmas sentimentality is far removed from his thoughts.
Judith Bingham was clearly inspired by his words and responded
with potent imagery of her own. Much of the music is powerful
and arresting and the listener’s attention is gripped, even
in quiet passages such as at the words “Out from the silence
You sing” [around 7:00]

The Darkness
Is No Darkness is an original idea. It was inspired by
Miss Bingham’s reflection on the well-known anthem Thou
Wilt Keep Him by Samuel Sebastian Wesley. She takes both
the text that Wesley sets and his harmonic language and reworks
them into a short piece for unaccompanied choir. This moves
seamlessly, via a few bars in which the choir hum with a
brief soprano solo over the top of the texture, into Wesley’s
anthem. It’s an ingenious concept and I think it comes off
very well, shedding an additional light and a new perspective
onto Wesley’s familiar piece.

The only non-vocal
work on the disc is the brass piece, The Snows Descend but
even this has its roots in a choral piece for it’s a paraphrase
of Judith Bingham’s Gleams ofa Remoter World.
This re-working features some powerful brass writing but even
more passages of genuine poetry in a superb exploration of
brass sonorities. I’m glad that Fine Arts Brass, who provide
such excellent support to the choir elsewhere on the disc here
get a chance to shine in their own right.

This is a real
ear-opener of a disc, featuring some tremendously inventive
and imaginative music. I’ve been enormously impressed by all
the pieces in this collection and Stephen Jackson and his singers
and players give tremendously assured and committed performances.
Indeed, I’m sure Judith Bingham will be delighted with the
advocacy that her music receives here. I said at the start
of this review that this is a very important release. It’s
also an outstanding one and I for one am grateful to Naxos
for having the vision to issue it. I recommend this with great
enthusiasm.

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